Free-choice minerals are generally loose minerals placed in an open container in pasture. Livestock animals, such as beef and dairy cattle, consume the free-choice minerals intermittently while grazing in pasture. When the free-choice minerals are exposed to environmental factors such as wind and rain, loss may occur. Wind may blow away the minerals or rain may cause trace minerals to leech from the mineral mixture. In some cases, when the minerals are exposed to rain, the minerals become wet and may cake-up preventing flow.
Free-choice minerals may be protected from wind and rain by forming a first protective soap coating over cores and a second protective coating over the soap coating. The soap is generally formed by adding a metal oxide to the minerals and then reacting the metal oxide with a fatty acid. This process of forming soap may be problematic because reacting the metal oxide provided on or in the minerals with the fatty acid or petrolatum may result in inconsistent or incomplete hydrolysis, which may result in the coated particles sticking or caking. The second protective coating, such as petrolatum, is applied over the soap coating. However, prior to applying the protective coating, the soap-coated particles generally require dusting to prevent caking or sticking of the otherwise sticky, non-flowing soap-coated particles.
Coating minerals with multiple protective layers as provided above can be problematic because the minerals may remain protected within the digestive system of the livestock animal and may not be digested or absorbed. In addition, petrolatum is a non-digestible substance and provides no benefit to the animal. Observing a livestock animal ingesting these protected minerals may also be misleading for a farmer or a nutritionist that believes the livestock animal is benefiting from ingesting the protected free-choice minerals, when the livestock animal is not actually receiving the intended benefits.